Atlantis United Read online

  He waited for the whistle for a free-kick, but when it didn’t come he sprang up and pleaded, ‘Hey ref?’ The referee waved play on and the Hy-Brasil striker made the most of the chance to fire the ball into the top corner of the net.

  There was a handful of Hy-Brasil supporters on the touchline, but their cheers were barely audible.

  ‘Referee, I was tackled from behind – that’s a foul,’ said Joe as he walked towards the centre circle.

  The referee stared at Joe, and reached towards his pocket, producing a yellow card.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Joe asked, but the referee didn’t reply, just zipping his finger across his mouth to tell the youngster to keep quiet.

  Joe was angry at the injustice, but he knew he had to calm down or he would soon find himself facing a red card which would spell disaster for his team. He took a return pass from Ajit and looked up to consider his options – Jess was making a run into the penalty box, and Ajit had ran out to left taking the midfielder with him. A yellow-shirted player lunged at Joe, but he skipped past the tackle and saw he was now alone running in on the keeper who had come out to narrow his angle to shoot.

  But with a gorgeous chip straight out of the Professor’s playbook he beat the keeper and watched as the ball landed on the goal-line and bounced into the goal.

  The goalie jumped up and pointed to Jess who was collecting the ball from the net. ‘Impedimento, impedimento,’ he screamed at the referee.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ asked Joe.

  ‘I think he’s asking for “offside”’ said Ajit – ‘we had a Portuguese lad played hurling with us last year and he used to shout that all the time.’

  The referee looked at Jess before waving his arms for a free-out, although he looked embarrassed to do so.

  ‘That’s a joke!’ said Jess, but sensibly kept quiet when Joe warned her with a ‘hush’ signal with his finger over his lips.

  Joe ran the ‘goal’ over in his head and couldn’t see anything wrong with it – Jess was nowhere near the action when he shot, and the defender was nearer to the goal than she was anyway.

  They had been robbed.

  Chapter 48

  With Kim and Joe covering and tackling like demons in defence, and Craig playing well in goal, Atlantis managed to keep the scoreline to 1-0 at half-time, when they sat down in a circle on the field to recover their breath and their energy.

  As they sipped cold drinks they complained bitterly about the refereeing.

  ‘Where did they get him from?’ asked Craig.

  ‘He’s a local, a Brazilian,’ said Ajit.

  ‘He seems to be able to chat away to all their team anyway,’ said Kim.

  ‘I suppose they could be from Portugal,’ suggested Ajit.

  ‘Or Brazil?’ said Craig.

  ‘So that’s why they didn’t need to acclimatise to this humidity. They’re all locals,’ said Kim.

  Ajit and Jess’s faces fell, but the rest of the players just looked angry.

  ‘Look, there’s no point complaining about that,’ said Joe. ‘Leave that to Victor and his brother to sort out.

  ‘We have to go out and try to equalise, and then go for the winner. And they’re not that good. The Barcelona guy is flashy, but he’s soft too. Every time he gets the ball Ajit and I will sandwich him. Just keep fighting hard, we’ll get there. Let’s start this half like a train and try to catch them cold. But be careful, I reckon the first person to even look at the ref without smiling will get a red card.’

  The referee whistled to get the second half under way and immediately the Atlanteans went on the attack. The Hy-Brasilians had been laughing and joking at half-time and seemed to be a little complacent about their opponents.

  Joe waltzed past his cover and flicked the ball out to Ajit who ran as far as the goal line before turning and looping a cross into the penalty area. The Atlantis captain raced towards where he thought the ball would arrive, and as he leapt in the air he remembered back to the videos of Ronaldo they had watched. He tried to copy the way the star moved in the air and hung there for half a moment, arching his neck and shoulders and meeting the ball with his full forehead.

  The ball cannoned off his head and buried itself in the net with the goalkeeper standing open-mouthed as the youngster ran away with his arm in the air.

  The Atlantis staff let loose a roar of delight and with the referee unable to see anything wrong with the goal, he whistled weakly and pointed to half-way.

  Hy-Brasil were angry and turned up the heat for the next few minutes, but Craig was inspired between the goalposts. He dived full-length to save the ball from one vicious curling shot by the sole female on the visiting team and blocked the rebound when the full-back came racing through.

  But the Hy-Brasilians seemed to grow bored with their efforts. They were certainly having no problems with stamina, but just seemed less interested in the result than Joe and his pals were.

  Joe looked across at Kalvin, who urged him to get forward. Atlantis were awarded a free on the edge of their own area and Joe took a breather while he studied his choices. He signalled to Kim and glanced across at Ajit and indicated with his eyes what he wanted him to do.

  Joe played the ball back to Kim, and then set off on a charge up field on his own. The Hy-Brasil defence was startled, and took their eyes off Kim, who had passed the ball out to Ajit who was haring down the wing. Joe reached the penalty spot, around where he scored with the header, but this time two Hy-Brasil backs had him covered so he ducked when the cross came in.

  The ball ran across to Jess who took half a second to control the ball before firing it at near post where the ball sneaked between the goalkeeper and the upright into the net.

  There was an even louder cheer from the Atlantis supporters, and Joe smiled as he saw the referee shrug his shoulders as if to say, ‘what can I do?’ and signal that he had awarded the goal.

  The yellow shirts seemed to wake up and realise they were now 2-1 down, but try as they might they couldn’t find their way through. Even little Jess tore into tackles, and even won one as the Hy-Brasil star player soon lost heart.

  The visitor’s only girl, Marta, was not so soft however, and she kept rallying her team to find an equaliser.

  With just a few seconds left on the clock she broke past Joe and zeroed in on goal. Kim moved across to cut her off, but Marta wriggled past her and got a shot in. It flew like an arrow from her boot and was bound for the top right-hand corner of the goal.

  Craig, however, had other plans for the ball. Drawing on everything he had learned in gymnastics class, he dived high in the air and flung his arms at the ball as it was just under the crossbar – and the top fingertip of his glove connected enough to send the ball off course and hit the woodwork. It bounced down towards Marta who swung hard but kicked under the ball and it flew high over the bar and over the fence into the river.

  The Hy-Brasil player looked to the sideline, but no spare ball seemed to be available, so she rushed to the door in the fence and opened it.

  ‘NO!’ called Luce from the sideline, but among the cheers for the save her voice went unheard.

  Marta knelt on the side of the island and leaned out towards the ball, which had drifted back within a metre of dry land. Her fingers brushed the leather before she felt two strong arms hauling her back from the river.

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Craig, as he wrestled her away from the water.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Ajit.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Joe. ‘Craig seems to have gone mad.’

  The referee rushed to the fence and waved a red card at Craig.

  But the goalkeeper pointed at the ball, which was already starting to change shape as the air leaked out.

  ‘Look!’

  The ball was suddenly covered in small fish, which leapt out of the water to snap away at the leather. Within seconds it was in shreds, ripped into a million pieces by small, vicious teeth.

  Chapter 49

  ‘Pi
ranha!’ screamed the referee, terrified at the Amazonian fish who the legend says can reduce a man to a skeleton in minutes.

  The official blew his whistle and rushed everyone back inside the fence. He called Aston and Victor into the middle and they had a short conversation in Portuguese. Victor walked across to the children.

  ‘He says he has to abandon the match because the match ball has been destroyed, which I told him is utter nonsense. There were ten seconds to go and it was a goal-kick to Atlantis. I’ve asked Aston to talk to him.’

  But Aston wasn’t talking to the referee – he was involved in a heated discussion with Kratos. After a minute or two he walked over to the Atlantis team followed by his partner.

  ‘Kratos won’t budge,’ he began, before steeling himself. ‘But this is my bet and even though Kratos recruited these star players this team is playing in my name. And I concede victory to a brave and superior side.’

  Kratos snarled at Aston. ‘This is bull,’ he said. ‘You won’t hear the end of this,’ and stormed off.

  The referee signalled to Craig to take the goal-kick, but four of the Hy-Brasil team had also walked off the field, so Joe and Kim just kicked the ball back and forth to each other until the final whistle sounded seconds later.

  The five Atlanteans hugged each other with delight, and their supporters rushed on to congratulate them. Marta waited to shake each of them by the hand, but the rest of the Hy-Brasil team were already in their dinghy and heading back to their island.

  ‘You played very well,’ Marta told Joe. ‘But you know we are not students of this island – we all come from the academies of big Brazilian clubs. There are five other kids over there who they have hidden away.’

  Joe nodded and thanked her for being honest.

  Marta blushed, and whispered in Joe’s ear. ‘And we had a video of your training sessions and all your moves. The ref was definitely crooked too. He has been banned in Brazil for two years for taking bribes. You had no chance and you still won.’

  And with that Marta jumped into another dinghy and waited for the last of the Hy-Brasil entourage to join her.

  Joe and Kim walked up to where Luce and Kalvin were both wearing smiles as wide as a watermelon. Joe shocked them by filling them in on what Marta had told her about the referee, and how none of her team were students on Hy-Brasil, and how they had worked out all Atlantis’s tactics in advance.

  Victor and Aston were still involved in an intense conversation which only ended with Victor storming away looking very annoyed and Aston making sheepishly for the last dinghy.

  With the last of the visitors gone, and Hy-Brasil submerged, the winning team and coaches sat on the grassy hill and looked down on their field of victory. Luce served soft drinks and juice for the kids, and the adults toasted their success with champagne. Kalvin brought out two large lamps and a barbecue and helped Maureen to cook a celebratory feast.

  ‘What a glorious day that was,’ said Luce as they watched the sun go down behind the canopy of the Amazonian jungle.

  They all laughed and joked as they munched on their meal – Craig even tried a barbecued piranha – and relived every moment of the game.

  Victor came back upstairs to join them, this time wearing his smartest white suit. ‘I always dress up for parties,’ he told them.

  Luce smiled, and asked him was he relieved to have won the bet and saved Atlantis.

  ‘Of course I am,’ he replied, ‘and I feel very foolish to have come so close to losing it.’

  ‘And now you have a second island to take care of. That should be quite a challenge,’ Luce noted.

  ‘Well… that will not be the case,’ sighed Victor. ‘Aston is not a bad man, just a weak one. He confessed to me at the end there that he actually only owns one per cent of Hy-Brasil. Kratos had bought him out years ago. He led me to believe he owned it all – so I risked losing Atlantis against gaining just a tiny piece of his academy.’

  The Atlantis staff were so stunned nobody could say anything.

  ‘And that of course means we still have Kratos dogging our every move and continuing to cheat their way to sporting success.’

  ‘But that’s not your way,’ said Kim. ‘And it’s not our way either.’

  They all sat down and toasted Craig and the crucial extra two centimetres he had grown that saved the day. And they laughed and sang and ate and drank long into the night on their Amazon island, enjoying each other and the camaraderie of being a team united.

  Atlantis United.

  About the Author

  GERARD SIGGINS was born in Dublin and has had a lifelong interest in sport. He’s lived almost all his life in the shadow of Lansdowne Road; he’s been attending rugby and soccer matches there since he was small enough for his dad to lift him over the turnstiles. He is a sports journalist and worked for the Sunday Tribune for many years. His series of books about rugby player Eoin Madden – Rugby Spirit, Rugby Warrior, Rugby Rebel, Rugby Flyer, Rugby Runner and Rugby Heroes – is also published by The O’Brien Press.

  Copyright

  This eBook first published 2018 by

  The O’Brien Press Ltd,

  12 Terenure Road East, Rathgar,

  Dublin 6, D06 HD27 Ireland.

  Tel: +353 1 4923333; Fax: +353 1 4922777

  E-mail: [email protected].

  Website: www.obrien.ie

  First published 2018.

  The O’Brien Press is a member of Publishing Ireland.

  eBook ISBN: 978–1–78849–072–6

  Text © copyright Gerard Siggins 2018

  Copyright for typesetting, layout, editing, design

  © The O’Brien Press Ltd

  All rights reserved.

  Cover image: Shutterstock.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Kim has always loved rugby, but until she was selected for Atlantis Academy, she never thought she could be a truly great player. Now, however, surrounded by new friends, great coaches and the cutting edge technology and training methods at the Academy, she’s beginning to see real improvements in her game.

  But not everyone is happy about the success of Atlantis Academy and its students, and mysterious enemies are on their tail to steal its secrets. Kim and her pals, Joe, Ajit, Jess and Craig are a dedicated bunch, and their hunger for sporting success is matched by their thirst for adventure. Whoever’s trying to infiltrate the Academy has a fight on their hands as Kim leads the battle to save the school.